There was a classic serenade set up on television last night. A hot, blue-black Spanish night, a woman on the cream stone balcony of a 12th Century castle and a group of wandering troubadours with guitars, fronted by an impassioned guy holding a rose.

It was a mock up, part of a documentary about the history of the guitar. And even then the woman looked embarrassed. In real life, away from your daydreams, away from the plots of romantic comedies, is it really possible to express your love through music? The classic example of modern times is John Cusack holding up the boombox in Say Anything. It melts most feminine hearts and he even got away with using Peter Gabriel. But Ione Sky still doesn’t get out of bed.

I actually think the serenade is nearly impossible to get right (and I have some experience, an ex tried to wake me up by sitting on the edge of the bed with an acoustic. My toes curled in agony and I feigned sleep until he got bored.) It’s an impassioned outpouring of love and sentiment designed to impress just one person. The problem is that the object of your ardour is usually totally unprepared, embarrassed and feels there is no place to hide: every blink, every half-smile, every wince is right out there and being analysed. It’s no wonder most people of a musical bent stick to the tried and tested route: the mixtape and the compilation CD.

So, indulge me, I’m dying to know – have you ever serenaded someone and what happened?

This week 17 Dots token Brit (i.e. me) has made it off the island and is currently hanging with the other Dotters in NYC. That said I still retain a strong commitment to my side of the Atlantic, so I’m going to totally ignore my surroundings and talk about Manchester-based Cats In Paris.

Cats In Paris make strangely intricate avant pop songs. They’re sometimes charming and goofy; sometimes cabaret creepy, but they’re always interesting. There’s a bit of Animal Collective, several atoms of the Chap, some Patrick Wolf. They made “goojfc,” possibly the happiest song to contain the line “now it’s dead! Now it’s dead!” And they also made “button (part two)” which sounds like a the final radio broadcast from a lost world and “the curse of jonah brian” which is possibly their most pop, but is still about a Spanish zombie. I love them.

I’ve reached the age where my friends are starting to have babies. After feeling slightly freaked out at first, I’m now pretty keen on spending time with my friends’ sprogs – after all they’re basically a smaller, version 2.0 of someone I already like and I get to do all the fun, rolling on the carpet bits and then hand them back.

There are hipster parents like my friend A who is feeding her tiny boy an aural diet of Los Campesinos! and M.I.A (his name is Jimmy.) But most complain about the lack of children’s music that parents can also enjoy. This weekend I’ll be spending some time with a very small person and his mum, C, has requested some songs. Here’s what I’m burning for her.

Various – Fuzzy Felt Folk
This is a fantastic album, full stop. The songs on Fuzzy Felt Folk date back to the 60s and 70s when even children’s music headed for outer space – the All Music Guide rightly describe Orriel Smith’s “Winds of Space” as “a lullaby for the universe.” There’s a good mix of traditional numbers, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and so on, and original material. It’s a gentle collection, but still full of strangeness and magic. Childless fans of freak folk will also dig this.

Various – Colours Are Brighter
Colours Are Brighter really put the kids in indie kids. Put together by Belle and Sebastian and released on Rough Trade, the album was conceived to raise money for the charity Save The Children. Most of the tracks here were written especially for Colours and the artists involved have made a real effort to remember what kids actually like – listen to Franz Ferdinand’s rather grim tale of a boy who dies after eating too many cakes. I’ve actually played Four Tet’s “Go Go Ninja Dinosaur” out DJ-ing in a bar full of adults and had people ask what it was.

It’s the small touches I like best about Latitude, like finding a full living room set, mantelpiece included, when wondering through the woods at night. I like the art works hanging from the trees, the pastel-coloured sheep and the ballet dancers and gondoliers on the lake. The festival took place last weekend in the grounds of stately home Henham Park in Suffolk. It’s storybook English countryside with green slopes and ancient trees and the sea just a few miles away. Oh, and there were some great bands on…

Yacht: – Yacht are one of the many plates kept spinning by Jona Bechtolt (also of eMu favourites The Blow.) Jona and his Yacht collaborator Claire Evans were utterly charming onstage and their fizzy electro-pop was both cute and twisted. Metronomy were in a similar vein, albeit a more Anglicised one. Apparently they have a really fun stage show. I wouldn’t know as I was jammed behind the mixing desk at that point.

dEUS: – I was very pleasantly surprised by dEUS. I’d always been a bit off them, based on nothing more than lingering prejudice due to an NME slating in about 1994. Having been guilt-tripped into seeing them (I was camping with a big dEUS fan), I was really impressed. They were much darker and more complex than I’d been expecting, with droning passages that vibrated across the main stage field before evaporating into the sky. I now have Pocket Revolution ready to listen to over the weekend.

The Breeders: – I went to Latitude with two female friends, as a sort of alterna-girly weekend away. The three of us were practically swooning at seeing some smart, seen-it-all women onstage and at the confirmation that there’s more to aspire to post-40 than a grim choice between ditzy Terri Hatcher and straight-edge Jacqui Smith. Please don’t think though that my entire appreciation of The Breeders was based on retro-Riot Grrrl sentiment though – they seriously rocked.

Sigur Ros: – I’d feel ripped off if I’d seen Sigur Ros and they weren’t beautiful. Beautiful is what they do. But on a dark blue night, on the edge of England, with the dry grass smell rising from underfoot… that, that was beautiful.

Grinderman: – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more charismatic individual than Nick Cave. I think, were he so inclined, the man could persuade the sea to part. As it was he made do with commanding every eye flicker of around 10, 000 people. Grinderman were mesmeric in the truest sense of the word. Even just after they finished I had no idea what had gone on, just that they were wonderful and now that they’d stopped the world seemed a smaller place.

Slightly disappointed by: Blondie. I love Blondie and I hadn’t seen them live before. They were note perfect and it was still fun because, after all, they were playing a load of Blondie songs, but I couldn’t shake the feeling they were phoning it in a bit. Sadly lacklustre.

Most sensible on-stage banter: This award goes to Elbow, who showed great concern for the assembled crowd, telling them to ‘STAY HYDRATED!’ How sensible, how Elbow.

People-I-could-hear-but-not-see-whilst-struggling-to-put-up-not-one-but-two-tents-in-a-high-wind-on-Friday: British Sea Power. Gutted.

When I first heard Lio’s ‘Housewife of the Year’ I thought about a future where robots would do all of our menial chores and decided this would be the listening of choice for your AI-enhanced Domestibot XR4. It’s a rushing piece of 1980s electro-pop, with truly deluded vocals from a cute, but unreliable narrator. And it’s so good! I love finding these random, random things on eMusic.
In the real world Lio is a Belgian singer and actress who was popular throughout Francophone Europe in the 80s. She collaborated with Sparks to make the partly-English language album ‘Suite Sixteen’ in 1982. The rest of the album is a bit of mixed bag. But on ‘Housewife of the Year’ the contrast between the never-admitted-to sadness and the bouncy music, which ignores the vocal in the same way the husband ignores the titular housewife, makes it a true stand out.

With thanks to hip domestic goddess Marianna Longmire for both the photograph and the afternoon tea.

Elle S’Appelle are one of those overnight sensation bands – the three-piece only formed last June. So far they’ve released just one single, ‘Little Flame,’ but oh, what a single. ‘Little Flame’ is the kind of song that takes you to giddy stratospheres, spinning madly between new wave and the output of Sarah Records. There’s even a trace element of English country dancing music, you could strip the willow well to this song. It’s exciting, it’s faintly demented, it’s my favourite thing to do the vacuuming to at the moment. Grab this track now and keep your eyes open.

July 15th 2.00pm Andrew Bird, The National Obelisk Arena

It takes a while to get up on Sunday. Emma makes it to Ra Ra Riot and raves about them, but, pathetically, I fall asleep again. Charlie comes round to the tent about two and wakes me up with more cider and we head off to Andrew Bird. My boyfriend calls me just as Andrew comes on:

“He’s got this amazing way of whistling! Really impressive. Ever so clear.”
“Whistling? That sounds awful.”
“No, it’s really good! And he’s sampling himself with pedals, playing about six instruments, you’d like that at least.”
[Sceptical silence and a quick change of subject. He’s just returned from Supersonic in Birmingham and tells me Om were “fucking awesome.”]

Then The National. I’ve stayed for this because I think I should give The National a chance. I feel heretical saying this in the world of eMusic, but I don’t really like them. My eMusic colleagues do, eMusic users do and Emma sitting next to me is thrilling with anticipation. Me, I think they’re alright, nice enough but boring. Ponderous. This does nothing to change my mind; I can feel the air getting heavier as Matt Berninger’s slow, torpid voice flops through the PA. They make me feel dull and leaden. This isn’t really fair to The National, everyone else seems to like them, I’m just missing the National-loving gene; it’s like being colour blind or something.

6.30pm Camera Obscura, Uncut Arena
I’ve recently fallen for Camera Obscura, having previously been a bit “yeah yeah pretty, yeah yeah Glasgow, yeah yeah managed by Stuart Murdoch” and thinking I had them pegged. Then about three months ago I got all smitten about their lovely swirling synths and misty-eyed about only ever feeling pretty in a cathedral. Live they’re a revelation (especially as I’ve just read Everett True’s massive diss of their show in Plan B magazine.) They look a little awkward, but come on, if they were out there swaggering like Motley Crue something would be very very wrong. What strikes me most is Tracyanne Campbell’s voice, so pure as to be almost thin on record, but standing on stage she’s fuller, riper, with slight traces of huskiness and a noticeable Scottish accent. A woman in her 30s and not a little girl. It’s so much better.

7.30pm Final Fantasy, Sunrise Stage
Belt over to catch Final Fantasy. Sitting on the woodland floor, surrounded by ferns – this is the perfect place to hear Owen Pallet’s lonely violin.
[Later note: Yancey, when I tell him about this, says it’s the twee-est thing he’s ever heard of and laughs at me. Nice huh?]

8.00pm Jarvis Cocker, Obelisk Arena
Run for Jarvis, only to find every parent at the festival is here and the arena resembles an indie crèche. Children everwhere. They’re very well behaved, but I can’t see or hear and they’re blocking all routes, like a toddler version of The Birds. Em and I stand and squint for a bit and knock off to see Blood Red Shoes.

8.30pm Blood Red Shoes, Lake Stage
BRS have the dubious honour of being one of the few bands I’ve accepted the friendship of on MySpace after playing their sample songs. There’s something both nasty and beguiling about them. The two of them, Steven Ansell and Laura-Mary Carter, remind me faintly of the incestuous siblings in The Cement Garden or The Dreamers. They are angular and seem possessed of dark kinks, but at the same time very young. Their music is just the same.

9.30pm Arcade Fire, Obelisk Arena
This is the high. The sun is setting and the Arcade Fire are here. They are in absolute control, taking us with them. It’s almost not enough to be watching, you want to be in the band too, or inside the music even, picking through the string sounds. They are strange and other, especially Regine’s Miss Havisham vocals, which have even more of an impact when you can actually see that sound coming through her mouth. Owen Pallet has joined them onstage, boosting the violin sound. With only two albums, neither of which have any filler, it would be hard for Arcade Fire to go wrong, but they still pace their set well, allowing breathing space between the heart-pounding likes of ‘Power Out’ or ‘Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations.’ Someone lights two miniature hot air balloons and eyes turn as the burning points ghost upwards. This is it; nights like these are why I come to festivals.

The length and breadth of Latitude:
Number of people in attendance: 20, 000
Number of people annoyed by cost of programme: 20, 000
Number of dreadlocked crusties selling drugs: 0 [Most unusual]
Number of grown men wearing tutus and fairy wings: At least 10
Number of random acquaintances run into: 21
Total time spent looking for Sunrise Stage: 2 hours
Total time spent watching Sunrise Stage: 2 hours
Total bites from assorted bugs: 19 and still itching
Number of over-long blog posts: 3

A welcome weekend for new arrivals, with a host of standouts.

Boom Bip, Sacchrilege EP: New EP from Cincinnati electronic/hip-hop producer. Lively, bright and fun, very highly recommended. Folks who love M.I.A., Diplo and Girl Talk will adore this.

Meat Puppets, Rise to Your Knees: New Meat Puppets album a full month early. Sad to say I’ve never been a Meat Puppets fan — maybe someone who is can chime in on the qualities of this one.

Bauhaus, 1979-1983 Volumes 1 & 2: Two best-of compilations from the goth figureheads. Joe says that the second volume is not available in the US, so a nice score there.

Moodymann, Black Mahogani: A beautiful and textural electronic-dub album, with some house elements tossed in as well. This has been a favorite of mine that for a couple of years now, so it gets the big thumbs up from me. The AMG review does a nice job of contextualizing it.

The Black Dog, Book of Dogma: Excellent — and extensive — best-of collection from the early ’90s London electronic masters.

Ride, Waves: A collection of every live Ride BBC performance. Predictably, the early stuff is better than the more recent stuff.

Camera Obscura: A nice collection of singles and EPs through Elefant Records.

Ikara Colt, Modern Apprentice: Most recent (and last) album from the UK act previously covered here and here. Kind of a disappointment, though.

Mouse on Mars, Vulvaland: Mouse on Mars’ strong debut record.

The Clangers were a family of aliens, who lived inside their planet in burrows protected by dustbin lids and fed on blue string pudding and soup provided by a creature known as the Soup Dragon. They felt magical and distant, yet curiously accessible. The Clangers, along with Dr Who, are part of a very British, very BBC, tradition of home-spun sci-fi.

Their creator, Oliver Postgate, was a key figure in many British childhoods. He dreamed up fantastical worlds, made models, gave them scripted words to speak and provided his own reassuring voiceover, not only for The Clangers, but for Ivor The Engine, Bagpus and many more. To this day the sound of his voice makes me feel safe and cared for.

Postgate was apparently loathe to add his own voice to The Clangers, believing his tiny knitted aliens made sense on their own. Their whistling language is included throughout this collection, part speech, part music.

Major, Mother, Small and Tiny Clanger were a musical family; they powered their boats with notes grown on trees by their burrows. This, along with their creator’s ear for a suitable score, comes through in the series soundtrack. Taken in isolation, I believe, the score, by musician Vernon Elliot, stands up alongside much modern classical music, could be worked into a folk performance or used as a lullaby. Even if you’ve never seen these little woollen creatures before, give it a listen. There’s life where you least expect it.